Alita
Alita, known in Japan as and originally named , is the protagonist and title character of Battle Angel Alita and its sequels, Battle Angel Alita: Last Order ''and ''Gunnm: Mars Chronicle. She is known for her prowess as a practitioner of the powerful cyborg martial art Panzer Kunst. Alita's background and history were briefly hinted at in Battle Angel Alita, but were not fully explored until Last Order ''and ''Mars Chronicle, which reveals that Alita was highly instrumental in creating the world within which the series is set. Alita takes on a variety of roles throughout the series, starting out as a hunter-warrior. She later became a motorball player and ultimately the champion after defeating Jashugan. Two years later, after saving the Scrapyard from Zapan and about to be executed, she was recruited by the Tipharean Ground Investigation Bureau to be an elite member of the TUNED, unknowingly serving as the basis for the development for a dozen combat androids known as the TUNED AR Series 2. In Last Order she spearheaded a team called the Space Angels which includes three of her replicas that competed in the LADDER-sponsored Tenth Zenith of Things Tournament. Appearance Alita's appearance is that of a young woman of average height with shoulder-length dark hair. She maintains this appearance through her different cyborg bodies. The Japanese version of Angel Redux has a lineup of several characters in Last Order and shows that she is around 150 cm tall in her Imaginos 2.0 body. Although she used several cyborg bodies in Battle Angel Alita, her height has tended to remain consistent. Alita's cyborg bodies beginning with her TUNED body feature permanent eye black, although it did not appear in her first Imaginos Body. In the OVA she is depicted as having red eyes and black hair. Except for her face, which is fair skinned, the rest of Alita's body has typically been a metallic grey. During the course of Battle Angel Alita Alita wore several outfits. In her first cyborg body, this consisted of casual wear in the form of a shirt, track pants, and sneakers. After gaining the Berserker Body, she switched to attire more appropriate for a hunter-warrior that featured black leather in the form of fingerless gloves and a sleeveless shirt and pants. Combined with knee high brown boots and a light yellow trench coat, this is how she appears in the OVA, in which she is transplanted into the Berseker Body soon after being found instead of her first civilian one. In Gunnm: Martian Memory, the trench coat is omitted. Alita's motorball body is depicted as being purple, with the number 99 in yellow on the cover of Killing Angel, the Gunnm 3D special, and Gunnm: Martian Memory. When not on the track, Alita retained the lower half of the body, over which she wore dark pants. She switched out the upper half, over which she wore a jacket, as well as dark fingerless gloves. While using her second civilian body she is first shown wearing a hat, a short black dress, light-coloured jacket, dark fingerless gloves, dark pantyhose, and dark boots. She later wore a sleeveless dark top, dark elbow pads, dark fingerless gloves, jeans, and white shoes. As a TUNED agent, Alita wore a black body suit and body armour, over which she typically wore a cape. The colour of the body suit and armour varies. Two illustrations that initially appeared in Business Jump and are reproduced in the Guncyclopedia depict the body suit as being red while the armour is white. The cover illustration of volume 5 of the Gunnm: Complete Edition depicts the body suit as being black and the armour a light green. In Gunnm: Martian Memory the body suit is a dark green with the armour in a lighter shade of green. Last Order reveals that Alita has been a cyborg since she was a young girl of three. She has been shown in a human body twice. During the sequence when she was recruited to become a TUNED agent by Bigott Eizenburg, she appeared as a young woman with a human body wearing the long sleeved white top and pants of an institution, although this only occurred within her mind. In the Epilogue of Battle Angel Alita, she was regenerated as a flesh and blood woman with long black hair and appeared to be taller than her typical height. Gallery File:BAA01 08 Alita after being found.jpg|Alita after being found in Battle 1 File:BAA01 51 Alita 1st civilian body.jpg|Alita's first civilian body in Battle 2 File:BAA01 117 Alita in Berserker Body.jpg|Alita in the Berserker Body in Battle 4 File:BAAOAV Gally.jpg|Gally in episode 1 of the OVA, Rusty Angel File:Gunnm 3D CG special pinup.jpg|A pinup for the 3D special File:Gally - motorball body in Martian Memory.jpg|Gally's motorball body in Gunnm: Martian Memory Names Alita has had several names, nicknames, and aliases during her long life: *'A-1'/'G-1': Her TUNED code name, primarily used by Bigott Eizenburg. *'Alita'/'Gally': The name given to her by Daisuke Ido, after his dead cat. *"Angel of Death": The nickname given to her by the Barjack during her time as a TUNED agent. *"Killing Angel": Alita's moniker during her motorball career. *"Kochka": Meaning "cat" in Russian (кошка), this code name was given by the Jovians in reference to Alita's catlike appearance and nature following her defeat of Tunguska and was used by them during Operation Glass Cat. *"Octopus lips": A reference to Alita's pouty expression, although not used often. *"Original": Initially used by the three surviving TUNED AR Series 2 androids, Sechs and Elf and Zwölf as a reference to Alita's status as the original TUNED agent on whom they were based. *"Sister": Ajakutty began calling Alita this after he conceded their practice match. *'Yoko': Her original name. After joining the Kammer Gruppe she was known as Yoko von der Rasierklinge, meaning "of the razor blade" in German. Personality Alita is known for her fierce determination and willingness to back this up with force when necessary. This is in stark contrast to her personality when she was a young girl, as she was much less certain of herself and tended to rely on Erica for support. Nonetheless she developed into a highly competent Künstler who was assigned to carry out Operation Maulwurf in ES 386. After she was caught and sentenced to atmosphere drop as punishment, she lost most of her memories and temporarily her personality after crash landing near Star City. When she was discovered centuries later by Daisuke Ido and resuscitated, Alita's initial personality was that of an innocent young girl. However after she saved him from the mutant woman, she began to gradually recall Panzer Kunst and also became much more confident and independent. Against Ido's wishes she decided to become a hunter-warrior in order to rediscover her memories through fighting. Alita has proven highly resilient as she has had to face her inner doubts and fears many times but has been able to rebound each time and reaffirm her belief in herself. She suffered a psychic breakdown when she discovered that her brain had been replaced with a brain bio-chip and her body was subsequently dissolved by Super Nova's Seca attack. However after Melchizedek called out to her failing consciousness she responded, allowing her to be resurrected after fusing with Tunguska and absorbing its wormhole core. Her personality has become markedly more catlike and mischievous, a physical manifestation of which is a tail that she chose to transform from a piece of Tunguska that was stuck to her rear end. Relationships Abilities Panzer Kunst: Alita is a highly skilled practitioner of Panzer Kunst although she still has not fully recalled all that she learned. Her memory is usually jogged under the stress of combat or her life is endangered. Although ranked as a Geselle when she carried out Operation Maulwurf, Caerula Sanguis rated Alita as being at least at the Höher Krieger level after she defeated Qu Tsang in Round 1 of the Tenth Zenith of Things Tournament.Phase 32. *Ausser Stosse *Elbogen Blatt *Einzug Rüstungen *Einsatrhythmen *Geschoss Schlag *Hertza Haeon *Verschlag Alita also used numerous techniques only once in the original manga which were not named but were later catalogued in Gunnm Works. Plasma manipulation: Alita is the only künstler thus far to use any plasma techniques, thus her use of plasma may be considered a Seinerweisen. Her use of plasma has always been tied to the cyborg bodies that she uses. *Plasma Bissen (German for "Plasma Bite"): Alita generates split-second plasma jets from her fingertips to create undetectable cuts and gouges in the opponent's body. Usually concealed as a punch, swipe, or parry. *Plasma boost: By firing plasma from her palms and the soles of her feet Alita can accelerate to supersonic speed instantaneously.Phase 88 *Plasma Jet *Plasma Soliton: Uses a plasma cupola - a dome-like plasma trapped between competing magnetic fields as a medium to fire a Hertzer Haeon made of a plasma-wave soliton. *Shaped Charge Kick: Using the Imaginos 2.0, Alita can emulate a in kick form. *Shaped Charge Palm: Similar to a shaped charge kick, but in punch form. Hacking: Due to her fusion with Fata Morgana, Alita is now linked to Melchizedek, giving her advanced hacking abilities. She has the power to negate any attempts to hack her and can enter cyberspace by dreaming, functioning within the cyber world subconsiously. Musical ability: After retiring from motorball Alita worked for two years as a singer at Bar New Kansas, using a keyboard as accompaniment. After she became a TUNED agent, at some point she acquired a harmonica, which she was playing when Figure Four encountered her on Factory Train 12. Alita has yet to play a musical instrument in Last Order. Equipment Alita used a variety of weapons when she was on Earth. As a hunter-warrior she used a combat knife to sever her bounties' heads. After becoming a motorball player she began using a pair of elbow blades which were dubbed the Damascus Blades. These were later forged into a single blade that she kept after retiring. She first used a firearm in the form of the Smith & Wesson Model 610 revolver to defeat Zapan in the Berserker Body. After becoming a TUNED agent, Alita was issued with various firearms and ordnance, including the TUNED pistol and the TUNED rifle. In Last Order Alita since her Damasscus Blades were used in the creation of the Imaginos Body, Alita is able to generate them as elbow blades from her forearms when needed through the use of her nanomachines. After Alita's rebirth and fusion with Fata Morgana, her Imaginos Body had upgraded to Imaginos 2.0. This gave her a long cat tail made from her body's nanomachines. She uses this tail as a third arm, allowing her to attack from behind without turning around. At some point in the three years between the end of Last Order ''and the beginning of ''Mars Chronicle, Alita's work as a Last Order agent took her to Venus, where she acquired Danko, a sentient cannon that had been engineered using Berserker cells. Danko usually perches on Alita's shoulder with her tail coiled around Alita's arm, and is capable of firing bullets containing Berserker cells and collapsing agent, enabling her to kill opponents in a single shot. Cyborg bodies : from left to right: Berserker Body, Motorball body, Second civilian body, TUNED body.]] Alita used several cyborg bodies during the course of Battle Angel Alita. In Last Order the Imaginos Body is her primary body for most of the series and later acquires regenerative qualities. Berserker Body: After Alita’s first, non-combat body was destroyed, Ido equipped her with a powerful cyborg body that he had discovered years earlier, the Berserker Body. She stopped using the body after becoming a motorball player and it was later acquired by Desty Nova and ultimately Zapan. Motorball body: The motorball body gave Alita speed and flexibility at the cost of power and weaponry. Because of the dangerous nature of motorball, the body’s limbs were constantly replaced and peak performance was not always guaranteed. As revealed on the cover of Killing Angel and in a 3 minute CGI of Alita playing motorball, this body was purple. It was in this body that Alita first received her Damascus Blade in the initial form of two separate blades mounted on her wrists. After these blades were damaged in the fight with Armblessed, they were re-forged into the single blade that became Alita's primary weapon. Civilian bodies: Alita had two civilian bodies in Battle Angel Alita. She received the first after Ido found and revived her, which had a pair of decorated arms that used to be owned by a prostitute who was killed by the mutant woman. This body was destroyed in Alita's first fight with Makaku. Alita's second civilian body was used after she retired from motorball because the Berserker Body had been sold by Ed in an effort to keep her in the sport and the motorball body was unsuitable for daily life. It was almost completely destroyed in the fight with Zapan, and Alita was nearly killed by the Factory for the Class A Offense of using a firearm. Last Order reveals that Alita has been a cyborg since she was a young girl during the Terraforming Wars. It is suggested that she changed bodies when she got older and may have been using a specialised body when she carried out Operation Maulwurf. TUNED body: Alita or A-1 received the TUNED body after becoming an agent of Tiphares. She was connected at all times via satellite to the Ground Investigation Bureau (GIB) and directed by an operator, who had the ability to provide a Pavlovian shock stimulus to her should she ignore orders. As the product of advanced Tipharean technology, the body had the ability to travel at supersonic speeds and withstand a great deal of damage. However, as a “soft” body supported by nanotechnology to create and maintain vital systems, the body could overheat and malfunction under extremely high temperature conditions. Nonetheless, the body was equipped with a variety of effective support weapons, many designed to look like insects. With the TUNED Body Alita also bore permanent eye black on her face which was later included on her replicas and is still present in her Imaginos Body. Imaginos Body: Late events in Battle Angel Alita and early in Last Order, Desty Nova gave Alita a new body after killing her with a powerful bomb. This body relied on nanomachines even more than the Tuned body, was said to mimic the human body down to the cellular level, and was thus a nanomachine-based organism. Two versions of the Imaginos appeared: *Original: The original Imaginos Body lacked the color-changing and shape-altering abilities of the Last Order version, and was also missing the eye black that had been present since the motorball body. Nova gave Alita a trigger in order to transform her Imaginos body when Melchizedek shut down and the collapse of Tiphares onto the Scrapyard was imminent. She used the trigger to fuse with the sky hook's docking bolt and transformed into a gigantic nanomachine-based Tree of Life, saving Tiphares and the Scrapyard. *''Last Order'' version: This version of the Imaginos lacks the accelerator. It can, however, match Alita's thoughts and change its coloring scheme and shape to better suit Alita. *'Plasma Torch:' Unlike the Berserker Body, which came equipped with plasma making organs, Alita had to make the Imaginos produce plasma through a more organic process. This caused Alita no end of trouble, and she eventually had to put herself in mortal danger just so she could gain the ability to create plasma by activating her latent survival instincts. Unlike the Berserker body, which only produced a single small jet of plasma for a brief time, the Imaginos can create a long-sustaining torch of plasma of various lengths, coming off of each finger. The effect of this has also given this move the name "plasma claw". *'Damascus Blades:' Alita's favorite weapon suffered from extreme metal fatigue in the year it took for Nova to resurrect Alita, so he ended up using it as an ingredient in the Imaginos Body. This initially upset Alita to no end, but she later learned in her fight with Toji that she could replicate the Damascus Blades, generating them out of her arms as elbow blades. .]] Human body: Five years after turning into the Tree of Life, Koyomi visited Ketheres Elyion where she encountered Figure Four and a senile Nova. When asked by Figure about Alita's whereabouts, Nova lead them down a hole in the Tree of Life to where a giant bulb had formed and he had left a message in between his bouts of insanity. This message revealed that traces of Alita's genetic code were stored within the nanomachine cells scattered throughout the tree's systems and that it might be possible to regenerate her. Figure broke the bulb, revealing a human Alita to end the original manga. History From flashbacks in Battle Angel Alita and further elaborated on in Last Order ''and Mars Chronicle, Alita remembered that she is from Mars and that her original name is Yoko. In the original series, Yoko was part of a group of Künstlers whose final mission was to target was Earth's orbital ring during the Terraforming Wars. At the penultimate moment her comrades were ambushed by an unknown opponent. Yoko escaped, but was left to crash on Earth. This event was later by ''Last Order, which elaborates more on how Yoko became a kunstler. She was orphaned during the Terraforming Wars and was nearly killed by a squad of enemy soldiers who tried to force her to cross a minefield. Unable to walk because her cyborg body had been damaged, Erica came to her rescue and supported her across. They were able to for a hundred paces before they knew that their next step would be on a mine. At that moment, Gelda appeared and saved them by wiping out the squad. She subsequently took them into Grünthal. As revealed by Mars Chronicle, at some point afterwards, Yoko and Erica wound up being hunted by bounty hunters searching for Yoko. Arriving at an orphenage at the town of Mamiana, they encountered Ninon Silber, the self-proclaimed heiress to the Martian throne, and her gang of bullies. When Mamiana was attacked by the Papagiot Corps, Yoko and Erica were among the few survivors and were rescued by Finch, a nomadic medic. When the Himmel membrane keeping Mars' atmosphere was ruptured by an explosion, Yoko, Erica, and Finch were rescued by Baldachin Association Gärtner Mui, who demanded they give up their lives to restore the Himmel's Säule membrane. Mui was contacted by her superior, Priesteren Neff, who ordered her to let them go. Yoko was subsequently left with a woman who claimed to be her mother, but who was actually an agent of Baron Muster. As a young adult and member of the Grünthal, Yoko was picked to carry out Operation Maulwurf.Phase 38 She was sent to upload a virus, known as Program Guinevere, into Melchizedek. The virus disrupted the navigational systems of the five Leviathan class colony ships, destroying four and killing 450,000 civilians, as well as causing a complete breakdown in Melchizedek's organizational processes, from which it never fully recovered. This event is known as the Camranh Tragedy. She was captured shortly afterwards by Caerula Sanguis and sentenced to atmosphere drop as punishment. Alita crash landed near Star City where she lay in stasis for 200 years. Plot ''Battle Angel Alita'' Early life in the Scrapyard .]] Yoko's damaged head and torso were found by the exiled Tipharean doctor Daisuke Ido while he searched the dump heap below Tiphares for parts to use in his cyborg repairs. When Ido discovered that she was still alive, he took the cyborg back to his clinic. With Gonzu Ido resuscitated the cyborg and asked what her name was. As she could not recall it, he named her after his recently deceased cat, Alita. Ido later took Alita with him when he went back to the dump heap to scavenge for more parts and pointed out Tiphares to her. He could not find anything useful but promised to rebuild her. She was first outfitted with the decorated arms from a prostitute who had been killed by the mutant woman and eventually her legs. When the reanimated Alita suspects Ido of murdering women to provide her body parts, her guilt causes her to track and confront Ido. She discovers that he is a hunter-warrior, and that he is seeking the true killer himself. Her fight to protect Ido causes an instinctive recollection of the lost Martian battle technique called Panzer Kunst, as she quickly applies a single killing blow to the murderer. She decides to become a hunter-warrior herself, in which job Alita occasionally displays a disturbing bloodlust and love of battle. Alita's first battle as a hunter-warrior was against a powerful, body-snatching and brain-eating cyborg named Makaku, who destroys the original body that Ido had made for her. Ido rescues her, almost dying in the process. Feeling he has no other choice, he reconnects her head to an ancient cyborg body called a Berserker Body, which had been especially made for war. Equipped with a new, stronger body, Alita is again challenged by Makaku, who has become obsessed with Alita and reequipped himself with a new Power Body. After a long fight in the sewers beneath the Scrapyard, Alita kills Makaku. .]] Shortly after becoming a hunter-warrior, Alita meets and falls in love with Hugo, a young boy who dreams of going to Tiphares. Unfortunately for Alita, her all-powerful berserker body proves to be a liability; since Hugo is a normal flesh-and-blood human, Alita is afraid that she couldn't even hold him close without accidentally tearing him to pieces. But what ends up killing Hugo is his obsession with Tiphares. Alita's drive and skill makes her the best hunter-warrior the Scrapyard has seen. Her skill and reputation as a hunter-warrior and motorball player elicit interest from Tiphares, the elite society suspended over the Scrapyard, against which she harbors some hostility. Eventually, after a confrontation with a resurrected and enhanced rival, Alita is forced to become an agent for Tiphares. Despite this ironic twist of fate, Alita thinks of herself as a possible bridge between the utopian Tiphares and the impoverished Scrapyard. Motorball career After Hugo's death, Alita ran away from home. She was found crying in Joe's Bar by Ed, a former Top League motorball player, who talked to her and signed her to a 12 race contract for his racing team, Esdoc Motors. Ido did not discover her whereabouts until he witnessed her fourth Third League race. During this race Alita defeated the player who Ido had a monitor ticket for, Valdicci, right at the finish line. This sudden discovery of where she had ended up greatly shocked Ido and after the race he tried speak to her by accessing a forbidden area. However she refused to answer him and walked away, returning to the Esdoc Motors trailer and not mentioning the incident to either Ed or Umba, the team engineer. Other appearances .]] Gally is the central character of the action RPG ''Gunnm: Martian Memory as well as the OVA. In the OVA she receives the Berserker Body from Daisuke Ido after he finds her in the Tiphares dumpheap and becomes a skilled hunter-warrior, although Panzer Kunst is not explicitly mentioned as her martial art. She is also featured in the Gunnm 3D special. Merchandising As the title character and face of the franchise, Alita is the primary character who has been featured on merchandise. Marmit released a doll of her in 2001 and an action figure of her was included as part of the Gunnm: Another Stories Limited Box Edition. She is also featured on one of the shirts designed by Heroism and appears on the covers of all of the Battle Angel Alita volumes and the majority of the Last Order volumes. She is the only character from the series to have appeared on the cover of Ultra Jump, being featured several times. Trivia * Alita is afraid of the Minois dryas butterfly, a phobia that she shares with Yukito Kishiro.Yukitopia - Profile * Alita has many similarities to Motoko Kusanagi from the anime Ghost in the Shell, ''they both are cyborgs, have endured emotional losses, both have superhuman-agility, strength and high-tech weaponry. * The following identification numbers have been associated with Alita: *Her number as a Künstler was 99, which originally explained why she was so attached to the number 99 during her time as a motorball player.Final Fight However how she arrived on Earth was later retconned by ''Last Order. *Her defendant number during her trial by the Earth Orbitary Federation was PMD-433-4424.Phase 38 *Her hunter-warrior registration number was F33-405.Battle 30 References Navigation Category:Alita